


Hosanna

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), First Time, M/M, NSFW, Some angst, Tender - Freeform, not much but some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 12:47:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20489120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: Because sometimes love IS a victory march, rather than a "cold and broken Hallelujah." Not always. But sometimes.So. Hosanna to God in the highest. And here on Earth? Love.No. It's not another Sussex Downs. It's another free standing. The goal, as it so often is, was to find routes into sex and physical love that are sober more than purely fluffy. Not to say that I don't like me some fluff: but I also love imagining characters who are mature, deciding things with open eyes, brave enough to find their way to happy outcomes without adding TOO much comic relief. Not "no comic relief." But without being laughed at, rather than gently laughed with. So--hot and sexy and plausible and successful for all concerned.





	Hosanna

“Did you ever—“ “Have you thought—“

The verbal trainwreck hangs on the air between angel and demon. Angel and demon, not so very different from mere humans, both stagger to a stop, then stumble forward, trying again.

“In all these years did you—“ “Sometimes I think maybe it would be—“

Again they stop. Crowley sprawls deeper into the booth of the pub, pretending the cool he secretly knows he doesn’t have. It is perhaps the first and most formative of his lies—the illusion of coolness. Aziraphale, with no such camouflage, flusters and blushes and twiddles all the various tea tools—cup, saucer, spoon, creamer, sugar bowl, napkin. Fiddle-fiddle.

He looks up from under gold-tipped black lashes.

“Would you like to—“ “Thought it might be fun to—“

They both laugh, uneasy. They both wait far too long, trying to avoid another train wreck. They both, of course, fail, but stop before the faintest of tiny sounds have been voiced.

They try again—but this time Aziraphale’s hand flashes up, stopping Crowley as he himself continues.

“Perhaps you’d like to come home with me, this evening? “

“For a drink?” It’s odd how much Crowley sounds like he hopes there’s more involved—an explanation to come.

Aziraphale flushes, a soft, angelic pink that turns the tip of his nose bright—not bright enough to lead Santa’s sleigh, but certainly bright enough to be noticed by an alert demon. “If that’s all you want,” he says, lashes fluttering down and fanning over his lower lids. He licks his lips. “I’ve been thinking. Being ‘friends.’ Maybe we could explore a bit?”

The demon on the other side works so hard to not writhe in anticipation it's funny as Hell. Actually, given the nature of Hell, it’s quite a lot funnier than Hell. The waiters on the far side of the room, who have been watching these two do the slow burn at the back booth all evening, elbow each other in the ribs and roll their eyes and force back giggles. “Explore? Got a bit of an explanation for that, Angel?”

He’s trying to sound sassy. What he mainly sounds is choked with suppressed excitement.

Aziraphale, sad fool, doesn’t look up. It’s a shame: he’s missing one of the great treats in life: watching a demon transform into a Disney fluffy-animal before his very eyes. Another second or two and Crowley will be assuring the angel that he can “call me Flower, if you want to!” But, then, the angel is providing his own show, so at least Crowley gets some payout.

“Erm. Just. I mean, I thought. You do know they think we’ve gone native, don’t you?” He flicks a glance up to Disney-Demon, who manages a cute little nod, but is reduced to “Ah. Erm,” as his only vocalization.

“Yes. Well. They do. And I’d been thinking that, in a way, they’re right. I mean, we like so many things Earth offers, and human bodies allow. Champagne.”

“Crepes.”

“Well, obviously, crepes. Lobster.”

“Draft beer.”

“Stout.”

"Fresh raspberries."

“Books.”

“I don’t read.”

Aziraphale, who’s known this demon longer than anyone except, perhaps, God Herself, tuts reprovingly. He’s caught him regularly between the stacks of the bookstore, buried in a book. “Oh, you do so.”

“Maybe. Sometimes. When you make me wait around.”

“Mmmm.” The angel is tartly skeptical. “Whatever, dear boy. Whatever. The thing is, I was thinking, there are so many other Worldly things we might look into.”

The demon, confidence beginning to return, risks a wicked little grin. “We could compare socks. I’m told his Holiness the Pope has some lovely silk ones. And there are hand-knit argyle socks in virgin wool.” No one, looking at his laughing face, could think he was sincere. Not even with the sunglasses in place.

“Socks might be nice,” the angel says, refusing to fluster. He studies his friend fondly. “I had been thinking a bit less in the sartorial department.”

“As in not talking about clothes? Or not wearing them?” The demon’s specializing in “shit eating grin” now, spirits obviously soaring.

The angel give him The Look: that old, fond look that says, “Oh, you—you’re incorrigible.” But in the nicest of ways.

“Perhaps a certain lack of haberdashery might be involved,” he says, cocking his head slightly. “Have you ever tried it before?”

“The usual, er, self-help. Had to check the equipment. Some on-the-job requirements. Nothing…” Crowley is quickly, strikingly sober. “Nothing that went anywhere, Angel. With humans it can be nice. But not—real. With demons it’s real—but definitely not nice. Not anything you do because you want to.”

The silence settles for a moment, and then a perfectly manicured, gentle hand reaches out and covers one of Crowley’s. “Oh, my dear. I am so sorry.” It’s obvious he’s sorry—to the heart. To the soul.

Crowley grimaces, and gives a complicated, serpentine shrug. “Six thousand years. You have to expect some things to happen. You?”

“Very little, beyond self-help and observation. One sees rather a lot in the guardian angel gig. Especially when you’re put in charge of men and women of importance. Henry the Eighth. Now, that was a learning experience! But, no. I’m afraid all I bring to the table is theory and abstract, and a certain knowledge of my own equipment and my own responses.”

The demon gives his angel a smile that, from anyone else, would have to be called “watery.” In him the pent-up tears and regrets translate as a rather cheeky leer. “Gonna be doing it on the table, then?”

The angel blushes, and looks around the pub, where the weekly trivia game is just starting up. “If you’d rather. But--perhaps not this table?”

The demon studies him, a fond smile taking over from the cheekiness. Soft. Cherishing. “Whatever,” he says, softly. “Whenever. However. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Angel. Fast or slow. You’re in charge.”

The angel looks at him, startled, pleased, blushing, shining. “My word!” he manages to say. “I never.” Then voice melting with love, “Crowley…my dear boy. That’s positively poetic.”

“Oh, shut it,” Crowley growls, looking away and spotting the servers at the far side of the pub, near the kitchen hatch. “You’re making a spectacle of us.” But he’s not really unhappy. After a moment he says, softly. “Yours, then?”

“Mine. Yours. Wherever you’re comfortable, my dear.”

“Yours,” the demon says, as his own flat has never been intended to house a life, just provide a “local habitation and a name.” The bookstore is nothing but life—life, love, passion, commitment, hope, fear. The angel has crammed all earthly delights, and quite a few earthly terrors into one small corner bookstore in Soho. But, as he’d be quick to point out, that’s the nature of bookstores. They cram entire universes between the front and back cover. You go in at your own risk, and come out gasping. In any case, the demon knows that’s where he wants their first attempt at “going native” take place.

He flags a waiter and pays the bill, and tips on a scale that leaves the entire staff in shock. He sweeps his companion out to the Bentley with a soft hand in the small of the angel’s back. The angel is just enough of a bastard to lean back into it, and give his escort the most melting of gazes. Crowley scrambles them both into the Bentley fast, saying, “Close your eyes, angel. You’re not going to want to watch the next couple minutes.”

“Crowley, drive carefully!”

“Rather drive fast, angel.”

He drives fast. Very fast. Before they know it he’s pulled up (illegally) right by the door at the point of the block, performing a physically impossible U-ee to get the car oriented the right way at the closest point of entry. Then he’s out of the car and sweeping his best friend from the passenger seat, and escorting him with all the grandeur and affection in the world. “After you, my dear.”

Aziraphale suffers a flashing moment of mischief. “Hold on, hold on, don’t chivvy me! I have to find my keys, dear boy!”

A crackle of cosmic energy lights the doorway. The lock clicks.

“My goodness,” Aziraphale says, barely hiding a satisfied little smirk. “You are in a rush, aren’t you?”

“Hardly a rush,” Crowley drawls, swaggering just a bit as he follows the angel in—and locks the door behind them with another burst of demonic magic. “Been waiting, what? Six thousand years?”

“Really, my dear? All that time?” The angel considers him, then traces a finger down the long, slim body of his friend, from clavicle down the sternum, coming to a stop just short of the serpent belt-buckle. “Attracted, maybe. But waiting?”

Crowley strokes his angel’s cheek, cradles his jaw. His hand is large, fingers long: he can cup half Aziraphale’s face in his loving touch. “Isn’t ‘attracted’ enough?” he teases.

“No.” Aziraphale is firm in his conviction. “Not for us. Not with eternity ahead. All or nothing, my dear boy. Nothing less.” He moves closer, pins the demon against the front door, the toes of his solid brown lace-up boots tapping the pointy toes of Crowley’s jet-black snakeskin cowboy boots. He leans against his beloved, lacing his fingers through his hair, crowning his skull, stroking his scalp, seducing sighs of comfort from the wily old dear. “I have been attracted since you slipped up onto my parapet, you wicked thing. But that was never sufficient to risk heaven for—or either of our lives. Eternity is far too long to live with a crushing failure.”

“Tell me about it,” the demon drawls.

“I shall, thank you very much,” the angel snips back. “You of all people should know what reckless nerve buys you. I wanted better. For me, certainly. For you—even before I loved you. After? For both of us. Nothing less than everything.”

“Sweet-talker.” But no one could imagine the demon’s eyes are not fond—his heart not pounding. He strokes his way around Aziraphale’s shoulders, drawing him into a tender hug. “Stooooopid. Anything from you is enough.”

He can’t decide when he came to love the angel. He knows when he realized it—he will never get the visceral memory of that thermos out of his hands, never forget the thunder of his blood as he realizes his angel has broken all his own rules, even to the point of handing Crowley death-in-tan-tartan, because he can’t let his demon hurt himself.

That moment he knew he loved. But he looks back over the centuries, over the many choices, over the ongoing hunger to be near his angel—HIS angel—and he wonders if it really was as simple as the parapet surrounding Eden, and two Celestials on opposing sides facing the tempest coming—and the tempest of doubt inside. His fearless angel, who gave away his sword.

Dammit, he’s cried over that stupid sword. Over that stupid, stupid angel who marked all history with one defiant act of kindness and decency to remind the demon that Hell was wrong: goodness existed, and somewhere, in some heart, heaven was real.

How long has he loved Aziraphale? A century or so? Forever?

Yes. Not that he knows how to say it.

“C’mere, you,” he mutters, and begins unwrapping this unexpected present. “Bet you’re belt and braces, right?”

“Of course,” Aziraphale says, smiling. “Bet you go commando.”

“Of course.” The demon chuckles. “Bet you didn’t when you took your bath in Hell.”

“Of course.” The angel sniggers. “I put you in tasteful thigh-length pants and a tank top and socks. I wore the socks into the bath.” Then, voice suddenly fierce, “I wasn’t going to put you on display. It was enough you had to show so much of yourself to me.”

One can so easily forget the angel is one of God’s select warriors. After all, he gave away his sword. Even when he picked it up again, he chose to find another way to motivate his demon to heights of imagination. And, yet—when Aziraphale acts, he acts with a fierce focus that can remind you how much you do not want to cross a Principality of Heaven. He protected his demon. He will continue to protect his demon. It is his nature—and his choice.

Crowley leans in and nuzzles the mad chaos of Aziraphale’s hair. It smells of feather-powder and shampoo and ozone and stardust.

Angels, like humans, are made of stardust. Or more accurately, their physical bodies are made of stardust, just like humans’, and stars are made of angel-dust. The energy and elements that make up a spiritual angel were the same She Herself used to make the stars. Crowley recalls the scent. He is holding the same blaze as his beloved stars…

“Kiss me,” Aziraphale commands, turning his face to Crowley’s. “I’m tired of waiting and fearing. If we’re going to go native, let’s enjoy ourselves, love.”

His fingers have found their way inside Crowley’s jacket, under Crowley’s tank top, sliding up Crowley’s stomach, rolling the fabric with them as they move, revealing skin. He nips the demon’s lower lip, demanding attention—demanding a kiss.

Crowley obliges. When he next manages to think clearly, he’s naked from the waist up, and his hands are being pressed to Aziraphale’s buttoned waistcoat, urged to unwrap a bit more, a bit faster.

“What do you like,” the angel asks. “You’ve done this. What do you want?”

Crowley is stopped cold, fingers shivering and failing to unbutton buttons. Fearful, stricken with shyness and grief, overwhelmed, he whispers, “This. Doing this with someone I love. Never done that, angel. Never thought I would.”

It bleeds between them. It asks the question—who is the greater virgin: the angel untouched, or the demon forced to endure the corrupt touches of demon-dubcon and mortal seductions and temptations?

“Oh, my dear boy.” Crowley finds himself held close, hands crushed between himself and his angel. “Dear boy…”

“Yeah, yeah. Give me a break, angel. Look—here. Naked you, naked me.” He’s magicked off their clothing to change the topic, exorcise the melancholy. Chest hair brushes chest hair--and who knew angels had such a lovely pelt? “C’mere. Got something for you.” He deep kisses his lover, hands cupping round bum-cheeks, cock pressing against cock, rocking against cock, stroking against cock… “This, sweet-cheeks?”

As predicted, Aziraphale sputters. “Sweet-cheeks? Crowley! Behave!” But his voice is happier, and there’s laughter between them, and Crowley thinks he may survive tonight after all.

He grips his angel firm, and spins, putting the angel between him and the door. He slides his hands under solid, muscular thighs, the thin layer of fat failing to hide the solid strength below. He pulls up, and Aziraphale bounces and locks his ankles behind Crowley’s hips, and they squirm against each other, sighing.

“Oh. This.”

“Mmmm.”

They have not even bothered to notice that the shop is dark, or that the traffic outside hums along merrily, or that the sound of pedestrians out for a night on the town fills the night. It doesn’t matter. What matters is paying attention to this—this first time. This brilliant new thing they are creating together. It burns between them, containing elements of all Her Creation: heaven and hell, space and Earth and stars, Eden at the beginning, and who knows what End anymore? Angel and demon, body and soul, time and eternity, life and death. At this moment there is no greater place in all God’s Making at which all her genius comes together.

Or, more Earthily, comes together. As it were. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

They are fairly good at this, for beginners—Crowley at least has the physical logistics down cold, and Aziraphale coordinates the emotional hurricane. It’s just as well. The angel really can’t offer much more than to “show willing” on the gymnastics. But the demon is barely managing to keep himself from discorporating from the depth of love he feels, and can’t say aloud for fear that, like holy water, it will dissolve him.

“Oh. Angel.” It’s the most articulate he can manage. “Oh. Oh, Angel.” There are tears involved.

This is what it’s supposed to be like, he manages to think between gusts of screaming need.

He’s nibbled his way down Aziraphale’s strong neck; found the top of the trapezius. He’s raked his fingers down Aziraphale’s back, leaving light welts, and feathered the same fingers down his sides, making him squeal and buck in desire. Aziraphale’s found Crowley’s cock, and is giving it every attention his palms and fingers have learned in six thousand years of solitary pleasure.

“Love me,” he whispers to his demon. It’s a humble request—and a question: hesitant, fearful, whispering of his own years of loneliness. It’s not Crowley alone who’s been abandoned here on Earth. In six thousand years, Aziraphale has come to the realization that even God’s grace is less clear when you have no one to share it with.

Later he will stop in shocked amazement, realizing that, yes: he shares God’s grace with Crowley. That he ever has, and ever will. That somehow the demon endures that grace—drinks it up—without pain or rejection, though with the gruff, bluff snark of defensive fear.

He’s fallen, after all. He’s felt God push him away from her. It’s no wonder he fears feeling her stirring, moving behind Aziraphale’s love, woven into that gift.

Grace.

Gift.

Grace…

“What next?” Aziraphale whispers in Crowley’s ear. What he means is “Is one of us fucking the other, and how?” But he’s too embarrassed even now to ask so crassly. He’s afraid to penetrate. Afraid to be penetrated. But something in him wants to mark this vast mutual sacrifice on the altar of love with something equally vast.

Which is how he ends up in the bed in the little room upstairs, desperately invoking miracles to allow himself and his demon to remain positioned to swallow each other deep, caress each other, stroking, fingering, lapping, performing a classic (and never truly easy) 69, memories of the sixties and the silly chatter of the humans going through both their minds.

The scent of a demon—spice and sulfur and smoke. Sandalwood. Patchouli. (Aziraphale laughs to himself, because he knows he’s not the only one to be forever trailing a few decades out of fashion…patchouli… His darling demon wears patchouli.)

“I love you,” he thinks at the demon, knowing that telepathy is something they’ve never developed with each other. He still presses the idea forward, as the tidal wave of an orgasm pushes other thoughts from his mind. “I love you, you wily old dear…”

Between his legs, Crowley gives the best blow-job he’s ever even imagined, much less performed. His eyes are hidden behind closed lids. His angel is clean and smells of caramel and almonds, for no reason Crowley can determine. He can feel the climax building in his lover—the bum pulsing, the back tense, the thighs quivering. “Come for me, sweetheart,” he thinks. “Come for me. Let me do this for you.”

He risks one tiny nip, teeth sharp against silken cock-skin, just a pinprick. It’s enough to trigger his lover.

More.

More.

The semen cascades down his throat, half chokes him, his angel is wailing above him, something about love.

And then he, too, is lost in it all, creaming. Somewhere his angel loses mouth contact. Probably gets a face-full—but hands quickly come into play, and lips playing the length of Crowley’s cock like a flute, and nose nuzzling into the turn of his thigh, making him howl, and hump, and shout, “Yes!”

And then—it’s done.

It is a good thing, he thinks, that he’s watched Doctor Who. All things end, and that’s sad. But all things begin again—and that’s happy. Be happy.

He chooses happy. He twists like the serpent he is, until he’s face to face with his angel. He miracles up a hot, wet flannel and cleans Aziraphale: face and throat and hands; cock and crotch. Aziraphale, no slouch, quickly does the same, and they stroke each other and clean each other together under the fancy tin ceiling tiles of the little bedroom, in the chaste Victorian brass bed, with the exquisite fancywork.

“What next?” Aziraphale asks, voice a bit sad. (Probably doesn’t watch enough Doctor Who, Crowley thinks, and quickly decides that this is something he will change for his angel.) “I don’t want it to end.”

“It doesn’t end. It just…has verses and choruses. And sax solos and guitar solos in between.”

“This is…”

“Guitar. Not sure who. One of the greats. Brian May? He’s got a degree in astrophysics. That may be enough to give him what he needs to write instrumentals for Celestials fucking.”

“Oh, you. Behave,” Aziraphale says. But he doesn’t mean it. His demon has it just right…

They lie together, watching the lights of the city filter though the blinds and blink and shine on the ceiling above.

“Was it right?” Aziraphale asks. “Did I get it right? Will you… Again?”

“Always,” Crowley says, softly. “Forever.”

“Oh, thank you,” Aziraphale says, relaxing, voice so grateful. “I was worried about it.”

“Silly angel,” Crowley says, and holds his lover tight, his fond smile safe here in the darkness. “You got it perfect. You’re an angel—I don’t think you can do it wrong.”

“Oh, my dear boy,” Aziraphale whispers. But the demon has slid into blissful sleep, face pressed into his lover’s chest, leg looped over Aziraphale’s knees. He stirs. His wings, black as his favorite outfits, ignore the laws of physics and bed mattresses, coming to wrap around his precious love. Aziraphale smiles, and releases his own wings, wrapping them both.

He stays awake all night, on guard, a burning sword of fire shining all night long. This is his Eden. This is his gate to Paradise. He will never stop defending his one true love.

Nota bene: No. Aziraphale does not, so near as I can tell, have gold-tipped lashes. Checking close ups, my sense is that the makeup artists chose to try for the best of both worlds, going with medium brown brows and lashes so they would show up in terms of acting, but the brows fading toward the edges, and all of it in the same broad spectrum of pale-tawny that is the underlying color of his hair. It’s ROUGH doing hyperblonds in the acting world: dark hair and lashes are such helpful highlighters of an actors facial features. BUT, I kind of like the idea of going a bit darker in brows, and darker still in lashes, and then tipping in gaudy gold. Why? Because he’s the only one of the angelic host or the demonic horde who does not seem to carry the hallmarks of Celestial blood. Crowley, bless him, has the eyes, that he seems unable to completely mask without his sunglasses. All the demons have either a) disfiguring marks that parallel the gold “beauty marks” of the angels, or b) some animal indicator, or both. Crowley has his eyes and his tattoo. The angels have almost identical marks to those the demons display—but in what looks like applied gold foil. Only Aziraphale seems to be lacking those marks. So, both to give Michael Sheen back a bit of the strength of dark brows and lashes, and to give Aziraphale a hallmark “angelic gold beauty mark,” I like the idea of giving him just that tiny sparkle. You can see a rather more gaudy, girly version of false-lashes doing the gold thing here:  
  
**<https://www.pinterest.at/pin/114560384244556021/>**

It just seemed right to me. At least for this story.]


End file.
